Lenin developed his theory of imperialism amid an intensification of European
engagement with the periphery. This intensification had begun during the second
half of the 19th century. Domestically, capital was concentrating into large
monopolistic corporations integrated with and led by a few large financial
oligarchies.

Lenin theorized that these two developments were intrinsically linked. The
concentration of capital created inequality. Inequality in the core constrained
aggregate demand levels. The general population could not absorb the mass of
commodities achieved by higher levels of productive capacity. Insufficient
demand created continual realization crises. The price of raw materials
threatened profits further. The falling rate of profit required economic
expansion to open up new regions for investment, sources of raw materials, and
new consumer markets.

>From the premise that the capitalist class controls the state
politically, Lenin theorized that finance-capital, the dominant form of capital,
used the state machinery to colonize the periphery. In the periphery,
capitalists would (1) use oppressed peripheral labor to produce primary
commodities and raw materials cheaply; (2) create an affluent strata (a
peripheral elite) to consume expensive commodities imported from the core; and
(3) undermine indigenous industry, making the colonies dependent on core
investment.

The overall effect was that the core pumped wealth out of the periphery. The
wealth flowing into the domestic economies of the core stifled the fall in the
rate of profit. Lenin called this set of circumstances "imperialism."

Several specific consequences followed; two are notable. One, surpluses
permitted the development of a "labor aristocracy," a stratum of
well-paid workers loyal to the capitalist class. Two, nation-state rivalry in
the imperial system intensified nationalist sentiments among the working class
and this deflected class struggle. Both of these effects functioned to
strengthen the bourgeoisie over against the proletariat.

Although this strategy would work in the short-term, Lenin argued, in the
longer term it would undermine first imperialism and then capitalism in the
core. Nation-state rivalry would lead to inter-imperial wars. The costs
(financial drain) and devastation (destruction of productive capacity) of these
wars would weaken core nation-states, not only because the losers would find
themselves in an unfavorable position and with a diminished capacity to exploit
the periphery, but because nationalist movements in the periphery and
anti-colonial wars would undermine the capacity of even victorious core nations
to exploit the periphery. Once the core lost control over its colonies the
imperium would stagnate domestically. Domestic economic stagnation would raise
the level of antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat leading to
a social revolution in the core.

There are at least two criticisms of the theory. First, the theory neglects
the fundamental exploitative capitalist relations between core and periphery
that existed for several hundred years before the "imperialist" phase,
calling into question the claim that Lenin is describing something truly unique.
What Lenin sees as the wave of colonization is actually an intensification in
colonialism. It therefore appears, contrary to Lenin, that
"imperialism" is a continuation of the same fundamental system of
colonial domination not a new phase of capitalist development. Second, while
some of what Lenin predicted happened, capitalism was not undermined in the
period that most closely approximates the conditions he claimed would cause the
core socialist revolution.

Andrew Austin

Any thoughts on the work of Harry Magdoff the locus of which is the
distinction between colonialism and imperialism? With Magdoff, I think there is
a continuity between the two but they are nevertheless distinct. The problem
facing the ex-colonial powers in the aftermath of the first wave of
decolonizations immediately after WW deuce was how to maintain economic
dominance of the decolonized countries [control of raw materials, cheap labor
supply, market for industrial goods] without having to resort to colonialist
style occupation and governance all while giving them a semblance of economic
and political independence.

Magdoff is highly sympathetic to Lenin's account but warns against turning
into a rigid formula that can be applied to all periods and situations. [cf
Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present p95ff]. Magdoff argues that
Imperialism is the result of the process of capital accumulation.

Magdoff lays down 5 conditions for a satisfactory theory of imperialism: 1)
"Restless expansion--the accumulation of capital-- is the driving force and
the very essence of capitalism. The desire and need to utilize resources of
other nations for this accumulation process are present in all stages of
capitalist development...

2) "The origin of capitalism as a world system determined its structure
and strongly influenced its entire course of development...

3) "The more powerful capitalist nations grafted their mode of
production on the rest of the world...

4)" The world capitalist system... had two historically new features a)
the institution of an international division of labor between manufacturing
nations and those that provided raw materials and food and b) the creation of a
hierarchy in which the overwhelming majority were dependent on a few centers of
industry and banking...

5)" the laws and institutions of capitalism constantly reproduce the
international division of labor and the hierarchy of economic and financial
dependency." Ibid p 98.

In Lenin's theory the central aspect is the export of capital. Yet today,
taking into consideration debt repayment, many peripheral countries are net
exporters of capital [cf. Michael Hudson Trade, Development and Foreign Debt].

Sam Pawlett

it's been years since I read Magdoff's book so I'd appreciate someone
refreshing my memory about the distinction he makes between colonialism and
imperialism...

perhaps my short-term memory fails, but didn't Andy A initially ask listers
about the difference between colonialism and imperialism?... and the present
thread header *Colonialism/Imperialism* stems from my post asking about the
utility of the distinction Lenin made between imperialist 'stage' of capitalism
and the colonial empires of 16th & 17th centuries or empires of ancient
world (difference stemming from different economic bases)...

is colonialism the direct and overall subordination of one country/ peoples
to another on the basis of state power being in the hands of dominating
power?...

what of neo-colonialism which has often been treated as though it were a
matter of imperialism retaining economic control after being forced to cede
direct state power...but as Nkrumah noted, neo-colonial methods are 'subtle and
varied' and neo-colonialists 'operate not only in the economic field, but also
in the political, religious, ideological, and cultural spheres'
(_Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism_, p. 239)...

moreover, neo-colonialism emerged in a time when imperialism was confronted
by a socialist 'world', national liberation movements, and strong working class
& rising democratic movements in industrial capitalist states, circumstances
presently in retreat. ..as Yoshie noted, there appears a current willingness on
the part of imperialists to establish protectorates...a coincidence?

Michael Hoover

Michael Hoover: it's been years since I read Magdoff's book so I'd
appreciate someone refreshing my memory about the distinction he makes between
colonialism and imperialism...

Magdoff writes: "In order to clearly underscore the unique features of
this stage of capitalist history, as distinguished from earlier phases of
colonialism and expansionism, many Marxists follow Lenin's practice (proposed in
his seminal world, Imperialism,: The Highest Stage of Capitalism) of restricting
the use of the term "imperialism" to describe the period since the end
of the nineteenth century. This historical differentiation is especially
important because the new phenomena just described were not accidental in the
economies of the advanced capitalist countries, and (2) the rise of competing
industrial and financial powers who were increasingly challenging Great
Britain's hegemony in world affairs--a hegemony that had been a determining
aspect of the preceding period."

Magdoff goes on to discuss the details of his argument, which he pretty much
shares with Lenin. The movement of this pattern leads to this effect:
"Self-contained economic regions dissolved into a world economy--one that
was characterized by an international division of labor in which the leading
industrial nations made and sold manufactured goods and the rest of the world
supplied them with raw materials and food." The question I see here is
whether this is the completion of the imperialist phase of capitalist
development, given the stagist theory of history advanced by Lenin.

I wanted to know what definition of imperialism posters were using. I tend
not to share the Leninist conception.

Michael Hoover: is colonialism the direct and overall subordination of one
country/ peoples to another on the basis of state power being in the hands of
dominating power?...

Not necessarily state power. It depends on what you think colonizes, whether
it is the state, culture, or capital, or a combination of all three.

Michael Hoover: what of neo-colonalism which has often been treated as
though it were a matter of imperialism retaining economic control after being
forced to cede direct state power

I think this is a useful term, for example, in the period following World War
II, if we use Lenin's definition, since the predicted outcome of the conditions
set forth by Lenin appears not to have materialized.

Michael Hoover: moreover, neo-colonialism emerged in a time when
imperialism was confronted by a socialist 'world', national liberation
movements, and strong working class & rising democratic movements in
industrial capitalist states, circumstances presently in retreat.

Yes. In fact, the conditions you describe are what are often defined as the
conditions signaling neocolonialism. However, their "retreat" does not
reveal the old colonial patterns but something new, something many people are
calling the global economy.

Andy Austin

Concerning the word "imperialism," I said what I have to say in
that essay I posted. One thing I left out (or said only implicitly) is that most
of the academic leftists who, today, focus on the definition given by Lenin in
*Imperialism* are damning him with faint praise: they pull out an economistic
concept of imperialism in order to show (as this guy Willoughby did) that the
concept does not really imply that what goes on outside of Europe --
superexploitation, colonial and semi-colonial oppression, foreign rule, wars,
etc. -- is really important for capitalism. Also, to show that earlier
colonialism was, itself, not important for capitalism (because it was prior to
the "era of imperialism"). This is precisely what Lenin called
"imperialist economism," and he fought it tooth and nail because it
carried the message that capitalism has no real geopolitical contradictions
(wars can be settled amicably; etc.). In other words, you define
"imperialism" in such a way as to say, "see, it was just a
growing pain of modern capitalism and has been replaced by peaceful
globalization." So these arguments are designed to get rid of Lenin's real
argument -- I summarized it in the S&S paper --, which was primarily
political, not economic, and which predicted that the struggles between
capitalist powers for control of colonies, and struggles against core capitalism
in the colonies themselves, would play a decisive role in the world socialist
revolution.

Michael: "is colonialism the direct and overall subordination of one
country/ peoples to another on the basis of state power being in the hands of
dominating power?... what of neo-colonialism which has often been treated as
though it were a matter of imperialism retaining economic control after being
forced to cede direct state power."

My response would be the following. There are and were many forms of
colonialism and many forms of necolonialism. You have to understand the
*process*. Colonialism sucks value out of places/peoples at a much more
profitable level than it can in the metropolis itself (hence Lenin's terms
"superexploitation" and "superprofits"). It has this aim
always. It accomplishes the aim through political and military control. The
"classical colony," with an appointed governor, the imperial flag
flying, etc., is one such form. (Examples: British India, present-day Puerto
Rico.) But colonial superprofits were also drawn out of China, Thailand, Mexico,
and other peripheral countries in which the politico-military control was
exerted *indireclty,* with threats backed up by some direct military
intervention (gunboat diplomacy, etc. Some of these places were
"protectorates," not "colonies." Some had independent but
pliable governments. All of it was COLONIALISM. Most mainstream social
scientists deny the underlying process -- coloniualism was not fundamentally a
profit-making operation, or, wherever it was that, the profits didn't come --
and so they bicker about what was, and what was not, a colony.

Neocolonialism was originally used (as by Nkrumah) to describe former
colonies which, though having gained formal ("flag") independence,
were still under the economic rule of, and generating the same healthy profits
for, the former colonizing poorer and, by extension, the whole of metropolitan
capitalism. But quickly it became applied also to places, notably Latin America,
where modern imperialism produces a colonial-like situation in countries that
have been free since Bolivar. Some Marxists don't like the word
"neocolonialism" for two reasons. It seems to downplay the
exploitative role of domestic bourgeoisies (it doesn't!). And it implies the
nasty "Thirdworldist" belief that metropolitan capitalist countries
are hindering development -- for these Marxists, the diffusion of capitalism is
necessarily progressive, a matter of modernization, development, civilization,
etc. Mainstream scholars HATE the word, precisely because it denies the
postulate that advanced capitalist countries are helping, not hurting the poor
countries (note the similarity to the Euro-Marxist argument).

The majority of progressive African-American and Latino scholars have no
problem about applying the word "neocolony" to ghettos, migrant labor
camps, reservations, prisons, etc. These places are colonial in the fundamental
sense that power is used to create superexploitation of the people who inhabit
them -- that is to say, lower wages, no job security, shit work, a standing
reserve army, terrible housing, etc.). Sometimes superexploitation means
maintaining a barracks for the reserve army, or imprisoning some people in order
to force everyone else to knuckle under, etc. Not long ago there were fierce
debates on the Left about the question whether the ghetto is a neocolony. As I
recall, it was pretty much ONLY the white left (or much of it -- but the
"much" was the influential academic crowd) that disliked the idea of
comparing ghettos to colonies. But the PROCESS is the same, even if there are no
political boundaries on the map.

Anyway, that's my take on the question of colonialism/imperialism.

Jim Blaut

Jim,

Industrial capitalism is very much alive and well. The tense, if you want a
deeper reading of it, reflects my hesitancy to endorse the view that colonialism
and imperialism are necessary for *all* capitalist development, although I am
definitely not in that camp you rightly criticize who sees the external activity
of the core as something incidental. Let me explain myself.

I have been working on the notion of internal colonialism lately, where
domestic economies are conceptualized with the core-periphery model. Here, for
example in the US, black America represents a peripheral zone (complete with
collaborators). If colonialism is reckoned this way, then it can only pass when
there is no racialized ethnic character to capitalist exploitation. This is only
(maybe) a theoretical possibility, of course, and I do not see it happening in
reality. I am therefore leaning towards adopting a general colonialist model to
explain the fundamentally racist features of the capitalist system, at the same
time trying to maintain a critical stance towards the model, since it may
exhaust its conceptual usefulness to give it such a wide application (i.e.,
external/internal). Some say it is a useful metaphor, but I think it is more
than this; however, I want to be careful not to reify an analytic. Does that
make sense? Let me explain just a littler further that in my view racialization
has been historically fundamental to capitalist accumulation (and vice-versa). I
believe that this way of looking at things, i.e., the colonialist model, helps
us conceptualize class and racial domination as a unitary phenomenon, and thus
avoid notions that race is only an ideology, class-reductionism, etc.

The tense thus reflects two points in my present considerations: (1) given
certain definitions of colonialism-imperialism, the possibility that under
globalization the class structure becomes so globalized that it no longer makes
sense to speak about imperialism (my previous position, and one that still seems
reasonable to me); and (2) the rejection of stagist theories of
colonialism/imperialism in favor of a general conception that sees colonial
behavior as the logic of capitalist expansion in reference not only to national
entities, but to ethnic groupings internal and external to bounded juridical
political units. That is probably an awkward way of putting it, but it expresses
how I am leaning towards the second definition, which would then make terms like
"neocolonialism" and "neoimperialism" less useful; in other
words, the basic relation is colonial, it only manifests differently in
particular situations (of course!). In this sense, and certainly this is
empirically true, there has not been a capitalism without colonialism, which I
believe is a position somewhat closer to some of the arguments you have made. In
any case, I think I am moving in that direction, at least for the moment. And I
am not sure yet if their is a fundamental contradiction between the way I have
previous looked at things and the way I am beginning to look at things, thanks
to your influence, as well as the influence of many others (such as my present
mentor, Asafa Jalata).

What do you think? I apologize if that was completely confusing.

Peace, Andy

Andy:

Here's a telegraphic summary of my own ideas on this question of
racism/colonialism/imperialism/capitalism.

Its in a sense a split-labor market view taken back through five centuries
and even, in some ways, longer. It starts (I think) with what I believe is a
cultural principle that holds in essentially all class societies. The ruling
class cannot, most of the time, exploit the producers to the extent that they do
not retain enough income (or food, etc.) to reproduce themselves and enjoy at
least minimum social life. To do so is to kill the goose that lays the golden
egg. For this reason, there never was, anywhere (!), significant slavery of the
sort used to accumulate surplus on a large scale WITHIN A SOCIETY, enslaving
members of that society. To do so would have led to the collapse of the social
system. Therefore, essentially all slavery of this type (and other types never,
anywhere, were numerically or economically significant, contra conventional
views about, e.g., Africa) took place either spatially outside the society --
this reflecting conquest -- or using slaves from other societies who were
brought in to the society, through conquest (e.g. Rome) or trade (e.g., Athens).
Cultural rules, laws or custom, mandated that the ruling class could not do
certain things to members of the given society -- to kill under some conditions
was murder -- but no such limitation applied to producers in conquered
societies. They could be worked to death if this brought wealth to the ruling
class. Or they could be genocided off the land which is then settled by
producers from within the society (generating additional rent and surplus
produce).

The basic point is: there has always been a split labor market! There have
always been -- in the case of class societies, one of which is powerful enough
to conquer another -- internal working classes and external working classes, the
former superexploited (if you will), the latter just plain exploited to the
limits allowing reproduction. I developed this idea first to explain the kinds
of national struggles that took place before the era of modern nation-states: in
cases where society A is powerful and conquers society B, class struggle by
workers/producers in Society B will have two enemies: an internal and an
external ruling class; likewise, the (conquered) ruling class of society B will
have the internal (A) ruling class as an enemy. And both exploitation and
resistance by external workers is likely to be more severe: this I then call
"class struggles across a boundary." (Big chapter in my antideluvian
book, The National Question, Zed 1987).

So differential treatment of the working class (defined so as to include
non-capitalist producers, who, after all, work) has always tended to have
differential effect on two class communities of workers: external workers, who
are superexploited and often worked to death (the life expectancy of a slave in
Brazil c.1700 was 8 years) and internal workers -- those from the same society
as the ruling class -- who generally, in all class modes of production, can
expect to survive and reproduce themselves (and the class).

In the 16th and 17th centuries, I am certain, the numerical significance of
external workers, on plantations, haciendas, in workshops and mines, was greater
than that of internal workers; or at least as great. European workers could not
be enslaved: attempts to use them on plantations as indentured labor collapsed
because of the cultural rules just mentioned. (You couldn't make a profit from
sugar unless you could exploit your workers to the point of death, and killing
indentured European workers would be murder since indentured laborers live under
the same set of laws ("they're Englishmen!"). Its important to note
that colonial plantations, mines, and genocided lands-for-settlement (e.g., the
North American colonies) produced a sizeable portion of all the production then
involved in the economy of metropolis AND colonies. Add to this the profits from
slave-raiding and the slave trade. Apart from quantitative significance, the
sectors that depoloyed slaves and other colonial (external) workers tended not
to be the old, medieval, merchant class -- or at any rate not the typical
members thereof -- and so colonial profits tended to be used in rather novel
ways in Europe itself: colonial accumulation was new money, and led to
development.

If we adopt a world scale of analysis, a la Lenin and Gunder Frank, I think
we can see that the evolution of capitalism since the 18th century has continued
to make use of these two working-class sectors. I am just beginning to study the
industrial revolution in western Europe, but I rather think we will find that --
as Eric Williams and C.L.R. James argued long ago -- that colonial exploitation
and accumulation was not only important in the industrial revolution but may
have played the decisive role. (Argue this backward: were Europeans somehow
smarter, more innovative, more self-denying, etc., than others? No? OK, find
another INTERNAL cause for the industrial revolution and the rise of modern
Europe! Once you have set aside the cultural and biological racism of e.g.,
Weber, you're left with the thin argument that Europe had a better natural
environment than other places, and that argument can be knocked down with ease.)

This raises two obvious questions? First, How does the
social-economic-political-military process that I have been describing lead to
racism as ideology? I think that, in all expanding, imperializing, class
societies, there has been an ideology, partly imposed on the working class and
partly accepted sui generis within working-class culture, that people of other
societies, different cultures, different colors, etc., are inferior, perhaps not
fully human, and therefore fair game for killing and enslavement. This is a kind
of ethnocentrism -- a universal attitude of no particular importance in other
contexts -- that, in a conquering, expanding society, becomes a ruling ideology:
we have the right to kill, enslave, take land, because we are innately better
than they are. This ideology is functional, and survives through epochs of
history. In the case of Europe, it emerges (I think) in c.1500 and survives
today in one or another form -- still functional.

The second question of course is: how does this square with the Marxist
theory of history? I don't see any real problem here if we discard a number of
false notions about European history that mostly penetrated Marxist thought from
the bourgeois ideology in which it floats. Before the second quarter of the 19th
century, before western Europe was really industrializing, it was NOT the case
that a European worker generated more surplus value than a non-European worker
on account of supposed (but mythical) higher technology, productivity, and
organic composition of capital. It was NOT the case that a wage worker in the
colonies was somehow less of a proletarian than a wage worker in Europe. And it
was NOT the case that the great slave plantations and slave-run factories were
somehow far behind the "truly capitalist" enterprises. Planters an d
other employers calculated carefully the economics of slave labor as against
wage labor. Slave labor has to be compared with free labor (in Europe) for the
SAME PERIOD OF HISTORY: mostly slave based accumulation came at a time when very
few wage workers in western Europe were truly proletarian, with a
"free" choice to move from employer to employer, etc. If we eliminate
all such red (?) herrings, I think we'll find that colonial and semi-colonial --
external -- workers played as great as role at least in the development of
capitalism as did European workers down to the present.

A lot has been written about the ugly racism used by 19th and early 20th
century British and French writers, including novelists, cartoonists, and
others, in portraying colonial peoples. This racism had a definite function. It
grew out of earlier (post-1492) racism but it continued through the various
epochs -- down to the present. We, on this list, tend to think of racism in the
US as the most immediate concern, and it is. But it is applied to communities of
workers who have been translocated, usually by force, from the external,
colonized societies.

Therefore we had two sectors of the working class back then. The external
workers were slaves, campesinos, mine workers, other non-European laborers. The
internal (European) working class consisted of wage laborers in productive farms
and the relatively small manufacturing sector as well as ancillary jobs
[footnote: the closest thing to an English slave was an impressed sailor in the
Royal Navy, who could be treated exactly like a slave OUTSIDE of England!.] In
more recent times, we have colonial workers and workers translocated from
colonial/external regions including the South) doing the shit jobs and barely
reproducing themselves in the midst of high infant mortality and the rest. The
internal workers, mostly White and European in origin, hold the same control as
before of the better jobs; they are the primary sector of a two-sector working
class. A two sector working class with segregated neighborhoods, schools, and
the rest.

A final point, Andy. I don't think it is at all possible for racism -- as an
attitude -- to be dissolved so long as this country is capitalist. Anyone who
believes that US capitalism can survive without having a secondary sector of the
working class to superexploit must be living on some other planet.